Truth That Sticks
by ingrid-matthews
Summary: Death, destruction, breakdowns and betrayal. Yet another day aboard the Galactica. Dark!LeeKara, with allusions to AdamaTigh.


Title: Truth That Sticks  
Author: Ingrid Matthews

Fandom: BSG

Word Count: 2102

Genre: Um ... unhappy fic? There are minor allusions to Adama/Tigh, yes, as well as Lee/Kara. References deleted scenes, speculation and vague, AU references to late S2 spoilers.

Rating: R, for violence, sexual stuff, general nastiness.

Summary: Death, destruction, breakdowns and betrayal. Yet another day aboard the _Galactica_.

**Truth That Sticks  
by ingrid**

0000

It's one of those terrible moments of enlightenment, the kind that should never come to a thoughtless man.

Tigh figured it all out at the worst possible moment. Examined the evidence without telling anyone -- gods, oh, gods why had no one bothered to check the CIC's filmed security logs -- and made the accusation in a drunken rage aboard the bridge, holding the tape in the air and howling as if vindicated from all his sins.

Maybe it was a victory of sorts. Not _everything_ after the shooting had been his fault.

"A Cylon! A frakkin' Cylon," he cried, stabbing a finger toward Gaeta. "He gave her the gun! I have it here, right on this log! It's _him_."

What happened next went by in slow motion, at least to most of the witnesses testifying later on. Very few of them got all the details correct, but that was to be expected.

What they all agreed on was the utterly calm way Gaeta responded to Tigh's screams. No frantic denials, no counter-accusations ... no words at all.

Nothing more than a head tilt, a curious look, before placing a hold around Tigh's neck that snapped it with shocking ease.

Dead, the old man flopped to the deck like a rag.

Panic and uproar then, except for Adama and Gaeta, who circled each other with cold eyes, at least until the Commander fired the bullets into him, one after the other.

He'd obtained a sidearm from somewhere and it was poetic irony that Gaeta's body was thrown across the console, the blood pooling around him like a lake, almost exactly as Adama's had six months before.

The Cylon attack that followed a few moments later was particularly vicious. A basestar, a hundred Raiders and the backup DRADIS reader's voice was shaking so badly with fear, they could barely understand him.

"Set action station one," Adama said, shoving Gaeta's corpse from the console, in an attempt to get a readout from the gore-splattered screen. He blindly pushed at the body with his foot. "Get this the hell out of here."

"We're going to die," someone muttered.

"Shut up and prepare jump to alternate emergency coordinates," Adama ordered. He wiped more blood away with his hands, already covered to the wrists. "And don't anyone here tell me they don't know how to do that."

"This isn't going to work." Kelly's hands shook as he held the fragile key to the FTL drive. "We never jumped without him before."

"It's going to work. Everything is going to work." There was a preternatural calmness to Adama's voice, as he were a man seeing the future. "Do it."

Kelly obeyed and the jump was survived.

Eventually, Tigh's body was removed.

The console remained bloody, but that was because Adama was lying across it, wide-eyed and shivering as he hugged it and no one really wanted to go near him.

Not even those who thought they understood.

000000

After Tigh's memorial, Lee kept pouring drinks for his father, who ignored them. Lee ended up drinking the ambrosia himself, feeling pleasantly numb by the time the Old Man got to the stories he'd heard a few too many times before.

"The first time I met Saul, he was threatening to break someone's neck. I had a gun then too. Nothing happened that day. But history repeats itself, or so they say. They don't mention the subtle changes to the story that happen along the way."

"No, they don't," Lee slurred. His glass was slippery, sliding around in his grasp. "So ... what now?"

"Now?" Confusion, and Adama smiled a strange, lopsided grin at his son. "What happens now is you prepare to take command of this ship."

The glass fell from Lee's hand, cracking into pieces upon hitting the table.

"I can't do this anymore. Not without him." Adama's statement was presented as irrefutable fact. "Everyone thought it was him who needed me, didn't they? The joke is on them, I'm afraid."

Adama laughed and it was a terrible sound, one that shook Lee to the core. He can't remember being more frightened, not even as a child, huddled beneath his blanket, no father there to protect him from the hidden things that lurked.

There's a truth there, one that sticks and gods, he doesn't want to know, please, he doesn't ...

"I loved him." Adama's smile was brittle and more than a little insane. "Always have, in every way. Still do. I have no excuse to stick around anymore. They found out how to kill me, son. I'm surprised it took them so long. I thought they were smarter than that, but at last, they figured it out."

Lee's response came from somewhere far away, the part of his brain that insists on survival. His hand rested on the broken glass; it bit into his skin, but he only knew this from the tiny drops of blood slipping down his fingers.

He couldn't feel anything. Nothing at all. "When do you want me to take over?"

"As soon as you please." The Old Man adjusted his glasses. "Now, did I tell you about that time we were on that merchant ship together? The one from Arion? That's a story I don't think you've heard ..."

000000

The command isn't what Lee wants. He's adrift at the helm of this monstrous mistake of a fleet, knowing that just coming out of each day alive really isn't enough.

The President is dying again, the seemingly successful treatment of the previous month failing her with cruel suddenness. She can no longer concentrate for longer than a moment or two and only pats Lee's hand when he begs her for advice.

"Whatever you do, I'm sure it's the right thing," she lies, obvious in her desire to be left alone, to rest ... to die.

Lee obliges her and it's a bitter moment when she's so far gone she no longer recognizes his face.

He doesn't visit her again, doesn't dare see how his father is faring either. He can't take the risk. Everything and everyone is falling apart around Lee -- a fine state of things considering he's not allowed to crumble.

Kara's been flying her Viper with a suicidal bent to her attacks, ignoring his orders to cool it. He can't stop her, so Lee does the next best thing and promotes her to XO, to stand by his side at the helm and keep him sane.

"You know I can't frakkin' do this!" she'd screamed, when he tossed her the new rank.

"Shut up and put it on. That's an order," and finally, the command is coming a little more naturally once she's in the CIC, glaring at the scanners, muttering angry instructions the pilots can't hear.

"They're screwing up out there," she growls, signing whatever papers are shoved into her hands without looking at them. "What are we going to do about this?"

"Leave them alone, that's what we're going to do," Lee instructs. He's starting to sound _exactly_ like his father ... he can _hear_ it. It isn't the terrible thing he once thought it would be. "We'll need something more than this eventually."

"We don't have anything else." With a scowl, she crosses her arms over her chest. "And pretty soon we're gonna run out of what we do have, if we don't teach these morons how to fly."

"It's not about flying. Or fighting. This is a losing battle." Oddly, Lee is seeing something he's never seen before -- the future and it stretches out before him in infinite loops of possibilities. Possibilities ... and betrayals. "We need to create something else. We need a fresh approach. Something that doesn't require fighting."

"You're crazy." But the light has entered her eyes as well. "Frakkin' crazy."

"So are you. That's why we're going to make this work." He takes her arm and leads her away from the bridge, mid-battle. "Let's find out how."

The first step toward this new goal is to spend the night together, frakking and mingling their mutual needs with something warmer, something they never could do in good conscience before but is downright necessary now.

They have to be joined in this, in every way, Lee thinks, stroking into Kara and enjoying her cries for release, even as he considers exactly _what_ it is they need to do to destroy the enemy, once and for all.

The Cylons had forty years to formulate their plan, he thinks, as she writhes beneath him. Their strength was patience and for all that humans lack in that particular virtue, they have other, equally useful, qualities.

A tendency toward depravity, for one. It's what the Cylons are trying to cull out of them; their elegant, if narrow, minds not understanding that this inclination is sprung from human DNA itself.

That it's as destructive as a nuclear bomb dropped on a helpless foe.

A revelation, really, made even stronger when a sleepy Kara tells him about her experiences in the Caprican fertility farms. Another confession lurks somewhere in there, but he's not interested.

A Plan is forming in Lee's mind, something long-term, something dripping with betrayal, that will eventually strike a fatal blow to a complacent Cylon machine not prepared for the alluring darkness of human nature.

Forty years. It's not that long to wait. He might even live long enough to see its fruition. He and Kara can do this thing -- together, side by side.

Smiling senselessly at the ceiling, Lee wonders if he should make sure to get her pregnant before they begin.

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"Surrender _is_ a viable political solution," says President Baltar, one year later to a Lee who has been in command long enough to no longer see most people as individuals, but pieces and pawns in what Lee considers The New Approach to a game the Cylons have been playing all along and only now are the humans beginning to get the hang of.

Unfortunately for them, Lee is very good at games. His competitive spirit certainly loves a challenge.

"Political solutions rarely sit well with the military, as I'm sure you are aware, Mr. President."

"The Commander's orders would be all that's needed to soothe away all those misgivings, I'm sure. The Cylons have given us a most generous offer."

Lee's smile doesn't reach his eyes. "We are indebted to their kindness, I'm sure."

His father has died by his own hand, two days before. This has made negotiations slightly more difficult, but Kara is there behind him, her belief in him keeping him upright, tying him to a bedrock of sanity, as Lee knew she would.

"There will be conditions to this surrender, should it happen," Lee says.

Baltar looks uneasy. He _is_ a sympathizer, Lee realizes, just as Kara theorized he might be. Wonderful -- that will make things so much easier.

"Nothing too outlandish, I hope, Commander."

"Not at all. Just a few minor things."

Lee outlines these conditions and hidden in every one of them is a Cylon concession to human morality. Each one is so tiny as to be insignificant, that combined, will eventually bring the Cylon Empire to its knees, left to rue the day they allowed the presence of human beings to corrupt their once-perfect society.

Our flaws are what will kill you, you fraks, Lee thought. We will live among you, turn you into _us_ and you will fall.

"That doesn't seem so bad." Baltar looks relieved for a moment, then pauses, as if someone's reminded him of something. "Oh, but what of the religious issue. They are quite adamant about conversion."

Lee shrugs, but inside his coat pocket, out of sight, he touches his father's sign of rank as he speaks. "There is but one God for me and I shall have no other."

Baltar laughs. "To think we all really used to be atheists. Not so much anymore."

"Not so much," Lee agrees. Kara's hand is resting on his shoulder. "We could all use a little true faith, isn't that so, Colonel Thrace?"

Her thumbnail scratches a single word against his back. It spells '_Victory_'. "I have a shitload of it already, Commander."

0000000

end

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